What could be better than tailgating and books? Before the Washington State University football game, WSU alum and Bellingham, Wash. history consultant, Candace Wellman, will be at The Bookie, 1500 North East Terrell Mall in the Compton Union Building on the Pullman campus to discuss her new book, Peace Weavers: Uniting the Salish Coast through Cross-Cultural Marriages. Free and open to the public, the event will take place on September 9, 2017. Those interested are welcome to stop by any time from 1 – 4:30 p.m.
Much has been written of long-suffering Oregon Trail pioneer mothers and mail order brides, but Native American women who crossed the West’s cultural frontier in the mid-1800s to marry settlers and military officers have been systematically marginalized and ignored. Yet such alliances played a crucial role, aiding settlement and reducing regional conflict between native peoples and newcomers. New from Washington State University Press, Peace Weavers: Uniting the Salish Coast through Cross-Cultural Marriages narrates the lives of four indigenous women, their husbands, and the legacies they left behind in the far northwest corner of Puget Sound.
Caroline Davis Kavanaugh (Samish-Swinomish) lived on a small peninsula nearly her entire life and protected its life-giving spring. She brought both the nephew of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and a literate Irish-born sheriff to her homeland. Mary Fitzhugh Lear Phillips (S’Klallam) married a territorial justice, then a founder of Wrangell, Alaska, and finally, a Welsh cooper. The first woman sent to the Washington territorial prison, Mary and her small children suffered two years of extreme conditions there before being released. Clara Tennant Selhameten (Lummi-Duwamish) lived a life of astonishing variety. She was a Lummi leader’s daughter who married the son of a famous Arkansas missionary and became the county’s first farm wife. After their son’s death, the pair traveled throughout the area as Methodist missionaries. Much later, an elderly Clara returned to tribal life as a Nooksack leader’s wife. Nellie Carr Lane (Sto:lo), married for many decades to a well-known Massachusetts seafaring family’s scion, was an entrepreneur and navigational light keeper who learned to use the court system to fight for her rights.
Ignored in histories that portray white female pioneers as mythic figures, these 19th-century indigenous women served as cultural interpreters and mediators, and participated in the birth of new communities. Their fates represent those of thousands of intermarriages that began as soon as the feet of European explorers hit the sands of the New World, and author Candace Wellman believes there are many more stories to be told. An expert researcher, her methodology combined disparate primary and secondary sources in academic and local history as well as genealogy and family memory—and her discoveries destroy common stereotypes about cross-cultural marriages to reveal remarkable, accomplished women.
Peace Weavers is paperback, 6″ x 9″, 302 pages in length, and lists for $27.95. It is available through bookstores nationwide, direct from WSU Press at 800-354-7360 or online at wsupress.wsu.edu. A nonprofit academic publisher associated with Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, WSU Press concentrates on telling unique, focused stories of the Northwest.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
While helping researchers at the Washington State Archives, Candace Wellman discovered that about 90 percent of all marriages in Whatcom County’s early decades were cross-cultural. The husbands included nearly every community founder and official. Yet when she studied the written chronicles, only white women were mentioned as founding mothers. It seemed many historians considered the indigenous women to be unknowable, unimportant, and uninteresting. She became determined to illuminate the hidden history surrounding these relationships. Producing her manuscript required eighteen years and close to two hundred collaborators.
An expert in research methods, sociology, history, and genealogy, Wellman began by re-scrutinizing old sources and searching for new ones, particularly legal cases. Focusing on cross-cultural couples, she found evidence that, except in rare cases, local and regional historians stereotyped and ignored the Frontier West’s intermarried women. Peace Weavers challenges their viewpoint and Wellman hopes that her efforts will inspire others to re-examine the historical role played by these relationships.
Wellman holds a B.A. in Sociology from Washington State University and a B.Ed. in History/Secondary Education from Western Washington University, and has pursued graduate work in sociology. Born in Quincy and raised in Washington, the Bellingham resident is a local history consultant and speaks regularly about women’s history and regional settlement.
For more information, contact WSU Press, 509-335-8568.
